The Bosshole® Chronicles
The Bosshole® Chronicles
Lisa X. Walden: The Future of Work is Human (Part 3)
Forget the lazy Gen Z cliché. We asked RGV's young pro to share what bias looks like on the ground, then brought in author and generational sociologist Lisa X. Walden to unpack the real forces shaping how the newest cohort works, learns, and leads. The conversation moves from stereotypes to systems, showing how curiosity disarms conflict, how digital native skills accelerate adoption of AI and new tools, and why mental health resources are not perks but infrastructure.
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Not to put you on the spot, Hannah, but I'm actually curious to hear from you if you as a Gen Z'er have felt or seen this kind of prejudice towards your generation in the workplace and how it's how you have perceived it as a Gen Zier.
John Broer:And that is how we will kick off part three of our conversation with Lisa Walden, co-author of the book, The Future of Work Is Human. I think you'll all agree this has been an excellent series, just a great conversation with Lisa, learning more about her insights, the work that she and her business partner Hannah have done over the years. So once you've had a chance to really absorb all the amazing lessons in all three parts of this series, make sure you go into the show notes, check out all of the contact information, get Lisa and Hannah's book, and you will be better for it. So let's jump in to part three. The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, the talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.
Lisa X. Walden:Not to put you on the spot, Hannah, but I'm actually curious if to hear from you if you as a Gen Z'er have felt or seen this kind of prejudice towards your generation in the workplace and how it how you have perceived it as a Gen Zier.
Hannah Best:That's that's a good question. I think I've heard lots of stories from um my friends. Well, number one, I feel really fortunate in the workplace that I get to be in. Um I'm oftentimes I am the only Gen Z person sometimes, and I've learned to kind of embrace and love that. Um but I have had friends that have stepped into these roles or maybe even in the hiring process where they feel kind of undervalued, that there's like this idea that they're lazy at times or they're not gonna bring um this strong work ethic. But on the flip side, all of my friends uh they seem to have this idea that I want to work, I'm ready to work, and I want to do it really well, almost kind of too well at times. Um so that that's been my experience from what I've seen. But personally, um, where I am, I think I'm in a a unique spot in my career. Um, and I work with a really great team where I do feel valued. Um, so my my idea might be a little bit different from my peers, but I've certainly seen the laziness or heard the laziness or people that are so addicted to their phones, or if you're working from home, they're probably not working from home, they're doing other things, um, which sure I'm sure that's the case in some places, but yeah.
Lisa X. Walden:Yeah, okay, thank you. I'm always just curious to hear from Gen Z because you know, I I always share the story that there was there was a period in my career where I would hear people talking about millennials when we were in your seats right now. We were new to the workforce, and I would hear, you know, boomers and Gen Xers talking about my generation and just ragging on millennials and like like millennials are lazy and titled and narcissistic. And there was not often an opportunity for a millennial to speak up and share. So I always, when there's a Gen Z, I want to hear from Gen Zers. I want to hear directly from you because you are the generation that is living and experiencing and showing up at work. So um listen, first of all, this is a cyclical conversation. It's almost funny to me at this point because every single time a new generation enters the workplace, there will be a reaction of, and it's almost always something around work ethic, you know, they're they don't know how to show up at work. And first of all, I'm like, Gen Z is new to the workfloors. Of course, they're going to be learning the ropes still. They're not going to be as good as the rest of us. They've not been doing it for as long as the rest of us. So that makes sense. And then the reaction of like they're lazy, they're blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. They have no work ethic. To me, that is simply a reaction to change. Change is uncomfortable. Human beings, you know, because it's a protection mechanism, it's biologically built into us, we react to change by, you know, no, stop. I don't like this. It's uncomfortable. Uh, and that makes sense. So, you know, I always tell people, you can you can feel those feelings. That's okay. Feel the feelings, the reaction, the like initial jump to judgment, feel those process, those within your body, feel it, and then try to move on to a place of curiosity. And I think, John, to your earlier point about the lack of civility and all of that, I think these conversations kind of align in a certain way. And that the root of the incivility in a lot of cases is we jump to categorized categorizing people uh right away with very little information. And I know that sounds I'm a I'm, you know, generational sociologist. So that is what I do for a living, but with the caveat that these are broad patterns, that this is just one lens. So when people categorize people in in the in the negative way, they stick them in a box and put the tap on and like this is who this person is, this is this is who this human is because of this one thing they said or the one thing that they believe. I truly believe that if we act on our curiosity and our human connection, our desire for connection and ask questions and lead from curiosity, a lot of the incivility will melt away. Because anytime, even just the story of my sister, anytime we come together, connect as humans with that curiosity, with that openness, most of the time, all of the, you know, the friction and the static melts away. It just does. So uh coming at people with a place of curiosity, but but Gen Z specifically. So um, some of the things that I think people need to keep in mind, they are digital natives, truly digital natives, have most of them never grown up without a smartphone, you know, accessible to them, which is a supercomputer. Uh, they are digital natives in a good sense and in probably, you know, a less good sense. In the good sense, they are incredible at coming into the workplace and navigating new softwares, new technologies, adopting AI in a, you know, in a way that helps you uh outsource these remote routine tasks. They have such good ideas for how to streamline and optimize uh processes. So that is an incredible thing that they're bringing to the workforce. And yes, of course, social media and uh ubiquitous use of technology has a negative component to it as well, which is why mental health wellness resources are so desired right now in the workplace. It's not a one-to-one, but it's one of the reasons that people are looking for those tools and resources. Um, I also think it's really important to consider that COVID is a huge influencer for this generation. Uh, we don't have time to get too depth, too in depth on this, but the way that we approach generations is looking at the events and conditions that happen during each generation's formative years, roughly being teenage years up to 23, but the things that happen in that time period really shape the way that they see the world. Gen Z experience COVID in their formative years. And the impact cannot be understated in so many different ways in education, falling behind in social skills, uh, things that were taken away from them that they'll never get back. I will never forget, uh, I did a presentation on generations, and I always like to ask Gen Zers to come give me feedback afterwards. And one did, and he said, Lisa, a lot of what you said was right, and I want to add a little bit to what you said. So, you know, for me, I planned my whole life. I didn't want to be like those dumb millennials that got a ton of, you know, debt at a fancy out-of-state college, and you know, like like me, Lisa Walden, who got a degree in comparative religion instead of like actually get me a career. Um, so he was like, I planned my whole life. I was so smart about what I did. I had my career lined up for me. And then 2020 came and everything that I had planned just went out the window. Nothing played out the way that I thought it would. My younger peers, they didn't get to walk at their high school graduations, they didn't get to go to prom. They didn't get any of those milestone moments that the rest of us get. Um, and they just have to live like that. They that's just forever their their their lives. And people have moved on, and but they will carry that forever. And there's this anger, there's this almost rage that why did why did this have to be our lot? Why did we get this? And for me, this fellow that came and talked to me, he said, my takeaway from that is you never know what's coming down the pike. You don't know what's coming in five, six, seven years. So when leaders say to me, you have to buckle in, work hard, pay your dues right now, um, so you can, you know, get to positions of leadership and enjoy the fruits of your labor 10, 15 years down the road, I sort of ask myself, really? Like, is that a guarantee? Is that a true guarantee that I can rely on? Because that is what I did. And it was swept completely away from under me. So now I'm living for me right now. I live for enjoyment right now. I will do my work and I will do it well, but I'm not gonna go above and beyond necessarily unless I paid for that. I'm not going to, you know, give my everything to my career because I know that I have to live now. Nothing is guaranteed. I saw death, I saw grief, I saw tragedy, and I saw my life turned upside down. So for me, it's important to live right now. And I don't think that's necessarily or inherently a bad thing. Uh, I think every generation that joins the workplace ushers in a new way of thinking. And some things need to be trained, right? We need to train, we'll need to train them on some of the soft skills. I've already heard Gen Zier say, I just feel so awkward in social interactions because I didn't have a chance to practice that over two to three years in the pandemic. So certainly some things need to be trained, and managers need to understand what those things are to really get them to kind of be where they need their them to be in the workplace. And some things they will teach us. And I think this perspective they have around work and life and this idea of not work-life balance, but work-life harmony, where work and life complement one another. Um, this pushing back from the work identity equals self-worth that they're bringing, I think all of these things are good for every generation, not just Gen Z. So as much as we will need to train them and onboard them and get them ready for workplace success, I think they're bringing a lot of value to us and teaching us a lot of things that will help every single person in the workplace, no matter what generation they belong to.
John Broer:So true. Well, I know that's true for us. That's awesome, Lisa. That is great.
Hannah Best:Well, being on the boss hole chronicles, we love to hear from our subject matter experts and guests about maybe their own boss hole stories, if they've had one. Um, so I'll ask you, Lisa, have you ever had a boss hole?
Lisa X. Walden:I I certainly have. And um he came in the heels of my incredible boss. That was my, you know, the inspired this work. Yeah. Almost, although I hate to give him this much credit, but almost an equal part, he inspired good company consulting as well. Uh, because he was the foil to my incredible, incredible leader. And and it was, it was a it was kind of sad and almost scary how it happened because he portrayed himself as someone. Um, long story short, I won't get into too many details for many reasons, but uh he kind of we we had buy-in about who would be our our next boss. And he had portrayed himself as a really incredible person, really curious, really open, um, really invested in our uh careers and our development, and positioned himself as someone who was there as a mentor and really hands off. So we we led the ship, the us leaders, and he would be very hands-off. Um, which would, which turned out to not be the case very, very quickly. Uh there were, it was, I learned so much. So I had this, I feel so blessed because I had this example of what to do. Incredible leader. She was flawed. We're all flawed. She had her flaws, but she taught me so much about what it meant to be a great leader. And then very immediately afterwards, followed by what not to do as a leader. Just like the perfect example of all the things that you should not do. Because he took this culture that was so curated, so strong, so um community-oriented, so tightly knit, and destroyed it, truly destroyed it. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, within months of taking over, within months, uh, to the point that now the organization that he he had to take over was like, you know, we had we had grown, we were still small, but we were like 13, 14 people. Almost every single person left. And if you look at the, you know, Glassdoor reviews, I'm not gonna mention the organization, but they're they're really not not positive at all. And um, the things that he would do, it was it was all the things that really um rubbed against my like like clashed with my values uh almost from the j jump. So I remember one of the things I I was a leader at this organization, and one of the things he said was we we were hiring people, and he would say, you know, we were looking at resumes, and he he was he inserted himself into that process because that's what he did for everything. And he was like, Well, I want to know, you know, let's let's sort out the Ivy League colleges and make sure they got higher than a uh 3.2 GPA. Immediately, immediately I was like, I don't like this. I think this is exclusionary. Um, I think this is discriminatory in in in certain ways. And frankly, if this is what how we did this, I would not be here. I did not go to an Ivy League college and I got a 3.0. Like I I valued, uh, this is another conversation, but my my college, I valued, you know, my extracurriculars more than I'm gonna do.
John Broer:Absolutely that I was doing.
Lisa X. Walden:And my extracurriculars are the reason I'm doing the work I am today. That's where I met Hannah. So I was like, I think this is a terrible metric, and absolutely we should not do it. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah. Uh we used to stock the fridge with food for, you know, our people. And one day he he came to the to our space and he went into the fridge and he grabbed some raspberries and he walked down the aisle because we had a little aisle between our desks and said, Why did we buy these raspberries? These are like six, seven dollars. This is my money. Why are we buying these raspberries? And he said this in front of everyone. Um, and six and seven dollars to me, I mean, like, is raspberries kind of a you know a lot to have for maybe, maybe, but what a strange way to approach it. It was disgusting. Um, and then the real kicker for me is uh one time um one of my colleagues was working on a uh proposal for a client, and she had written it, she had worked really hard on it, and he wanted to be uh he wanted her to send that proposal to him. So she did. She sent the proposal, and then he came to me and he said, Lisa, look at this terrible proposal. It just really does not hit the mark at all. I think we need to rewrite this and rework it because it's just really bad. And I said, Well, have you told her to rewrite and rework this? He was like, No, I think we need to take a stab at it together first. So exactly, exactly. No, like a boss hole in every way, shape, and form that you can imagine. Like to not give her a chance to remedy it, first of all. Second of all, it was it was not that bad. He just wanted to micromanage even down to the tiniest word choice how we did our business. And so there was no trust, there was public humiliation, there was, you know, undermining people, there was pitting, you know, pitting people against one another. Every way, shape, and form that you can imagine. He destroyed our culture and destroyed my I left within within a few months. And I think this is this is where you know, this tell, this canary in the coal mine is really true. When your you know, most devoted, excited, passionate people start leaving, that's the sign that it's time to jump ship. And I I was I was the first one to jump. I was like, I can't stay here anymore. And I told him, I was very honest. I said, the way you're leading this company does not align with my value system, and I have to leave. I can't do it anymore. He did not love that, but he was like, I'm glad that you've made this decision. I think it's best for everyone. I said, I totally agree. Thank you. We parted ways, and then he proceeded to talk badly about me. Of course, the rest of the team. But then every, you know, over the course of a couple years, every single person barring barring two people have left. Yeah, all of them saying, you know, one unfortunately, one of my friends who's a leader stayed for a very long time and he actually had to get therapy because of the experience of working for this person. Because he said, I stayed as long as I did because I wanted to protect the other people. So I formed, you know, kind of a barrier between his what ended up being abuse and the rest of my the rest of my team because I didn't want them to feel what I felt. And now I'm rebuilding my sense of self-worth from scratch. So that's a very extreme example, but yes, I have certainly experienced a boss hole.
John Broer:Lisa, Lisa, I sadly it's it's not as extreme as you may think. I mean, we've had five years of stories um not dissimilar from that and and horrifying. I mean, that is a that is a horrible situation. I mean, if you think about the business owners, you would say, well, was it worth it? Was it worth it hiring that person who number one lied or misrepresented how he was going to approach things to his team and look at all the people that have gone. Look at now, I love your perspective. It's like I've grown from this, I've seen the best, and now I've seen the worst, and I know which direction I want to go. But think of the cost. I mean, think of the not just the financial cost, the emotional and physical impact that's had on, well, just the the gentleman that stayed there. Um and it's so avoidable. It's so avoidable. But thank you for sharing that. That's what has made this podcast so unique, I think, in the marketplace. But I really appreciate that.
Lisa X. Walden:Well, and I'll just I want to just share one final thing that I think is so important. Um, and again, I don't know if I shared this in the session with you all. Um, one leader I spoke to a year ago, his name is Franz Manderson. He's so incredible. He's a leader um in the Cayman Islands government. I had, I was very blessed to be able to do an event, uh, a couple events actually down there.
John Broer:Okay.
Lisa X. Walden:And he said this one thing to me that I so thank you. If you're listening, Franz, thank you for this. Because I I have used it in just about every leadership presentation I've done because I think it's so such a great compass and such a great nugget of wisdom. And he said, you know, when I show up as a leader, when I show up with my people, I always think about how will I feature in their life story? And I think that is so incredible because even just my two examples. Think about, you know, my my leader who was an awesome person who I tell this story with with so much joy and gratitude versus my bosshole leader. And how do you, listeners, want to feature in your people's life stories? And I think that is such, just such a beautiful way to put it and gets back to my point of I think this is a humanistic thing more than anything. We are human beings, we connect, we tell stories about each other and um for one another. And how do you want to feature in their life story? I just think it's so wise.
John Broer:Well, speaking of stories, go get the book, The Future of Work is Human. It's in the show notes. Lisa, thank you so much. Hannah, you know, I'm I'm just so glad you and I got a chance to experience Lisa's presentation. And now the bosshole transformation nation is going to get to experience her too.
Hannah Best:Yes. Thank you, Lisa, and thank you for your for sharing your message in this book. For someone that's new in their career and entering the workforce. This is so simple, but it's so powerful and it hits so home when it comes to humanity. And we're messy as humans, but we're we're beautiful too. And this is an example of that. So thank you for the work you've done.
Lisa X. Walden:Wow, that means so much to me. Thank you so, so much.
John Broer:All right, and we will see you next time on the Boss Hole Chronicles. Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Bosshole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here. And if you have your own bosshole story that you want to share with the Bosshole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystory at the bossholechronicles.com. Again, my story at the bossholechronicles.com. We'll see you next time.